9. The Odd Life of Timothy Green

Maybe you’ve seen the viral video of the two children howling in the backseat of their parents’ car after The Odd Life of Timothy Green. That is what this saccharine weepie did to my soul. Timothy, an elfin boy whose legs are covered with leaves, emerges fully grown from the exact spot in the garden where infertile Cindy (Jennifer Garner) and Jim Green (Joel Edgerton) buried a box full of their hopes and dreams for a child. Timothy wins over the hearts and minds of everyone in a quintessentially American small town (the chief industry is pencilmaking), and then his leaves start to fall off. Uh-oh. Is this a heartwarming look at the longing for a child? More like a taunting of the infertile, who are depicted as so naive that they’ll embrace a talking garden gnome if that’s what it takes to be parents.